Neil Humphreys' Be My Baby

‎"My excited wife cried, craving her head left and right and waddling slightly from side to side like a disoriented penguin."

‎"We giggled like cheeky cherubs and danced around the bathroom to Judy Garland - once my wife had pulled up her trousers."

""What? What is it? What have you seen? What does it say? You've looked at it before me, haven't you? I told you not to do that. Well, what does it say then?" My wife often does this: Argue with herself and win."

‎"Checking over both shoulders, I skulked down the aisles for several minutes, taking a disturbing level of interest in underarm deodorant, while waiting for an elderly man to make a final decision on the colour of a toothbrush." - On buying a pregnancy test kit

‎"There is a laid-back calmness, a certain serenity even, where unchecked jubilation and hysteria should be. After 15 years of waiting for the doctor to say yes, I fear a sense of anticlimax sneaking up and I'm struggling to deal with it. This is not how I'm supposed to feel." - On news of his wife's pregnancy

‎"Now she rubs more than Aladdin." - On his wife's propensity for belly-rubbin

"Yes, there was a family called the Kerrs who had the bright idea of naming their son Wayne."

"When this is all over, I'm gonna feel like a conductor's baton waving about in the Royal Albert Hall." - On the expansion of his wife's cervix during delivery

"After several fruitless phone calls, I concluded an obstetrician's duties included hiring obstreperous receptionists." - On a frustrating search for someone to deliver the baby

‎"She once slipped on our wet, tiled kitchen floor, forgetting that she herself had mopped it just five minutes earlier." - Neil Humphreys on his wife's genetic bumbling
I know someone like that.

‎"I heard the toilet flush in my wife's second home before he waddled in, hands permanently stuck to the back of her hips." - Neil Humphreys on his wife's active bladder

‎"We needed whites, according to my wife, lots of whites. White is the new black for sexless babies. We're gonna have a bouncing baby ghost." - Neil Humphreys on buying clothes for his baby whose sex he does not want to know

‎"One particular boy's tee displayed all the symbols of popular Australian sports: a cricket bat, footy boot, golf club. Where I grew up, that was a list of weapons." - on the unoriginality of children's clothing

‎"Nursing bras tend to come in three sizes: large, extra large and parachute."


"He likes to read and write?! Was that the best you could come up with?" I hissed. "You might as well have said that I live sand and water play too!" - on his wife's introduction of him at a parenting class


"My mother always said I had a great face for radio."


"She now leaves notes everywhere, detailing the day's agenda and any outstanding errands or engagements in a paranoid bid to stop her mind unraveling. She is turning into Guy Pearce in Memento." - on third-trimester pregnancy amnesia or mommy brain


"The pelvic floor muscles have enough to concern themselves with at the moment and a sudden increase in abdominal pressure from laughing may allow a few drops of urine to squeeze through. Being a caring husband, I'm taking this additional responsibility seriously by making her laugh as often as possible."


"... as welcome as a fart in an astronaut's suit."


A midwife had handwritten 'wife - vegetarian' and 'husband - author'. What was its relevance? Perhaps the tools of my profession will be of some service during the birth. Perhaps Dr Derek's head will pop out at the end of the bed and shout, "We need to get this baby out now! I need a clamp, scissors and a couple of funny paragraphs!"


Baby-themed CD: Be My Baby, Sweet Child of Mine, Ice Ice Baby, Hot Me Baby One More Time, Final Countdown, Under Pressure, Push It


Only 5% of women deliver on their expected due dates.


"Wait. Stop the car," she replied, suddenly clutching her tummy with both hands. "What? What is it?" I said, executing an emergency stop in the middle of the deserted road. "Look," my wife exclaimed. "There's a load of kangaroos grazing over there." I almost bloody left here there.


Moments later, after a particularly hefty push, I let go of my wife's leg to kiss her gently on the forehead, only to watch it flop spectacularly off the bed and swing limply over the side. "Neil, my leg is numb from the epidural," my wife screamed. "If you want this baby, I suggest you go pick up my leg and bring it back!"


Tokophobia = fear of childbirth


Five reasons why a baby cries - hunger, pain, tiredness, dirty diaper, hot/cold


To-do: Glucola test for gestational diabetes, TENS, antenatal classes

Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior by Amy Chua (WSJ)

Can a regimen of no playdates, no TV, no computer games and hours of music practice create happy kids? And what happens when they fight back?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html

Teachers need to earn their respect too (Caroline Lim, Today, 30/10, p24)

I refer to “Different strokes required” (Oct 29), and would like to highlight that not only are students of current times different from those of yesteryears’ but that teachers have changed with the times.

Most local teachers are products of the educational system and our changing society and it is appalling to read of teachers being convicted or investigated for molestation or outrage of modesty.

A week ago, in the first case of its kind here in Singapore, a female teacher was charged with having sex with an underage student. And there was a recent media report about teachers moonlighting as bar top/pole dancers.

Besides paper qualifications, are teachers’ character assessed before they are hired? When more than 90 per cent of Singapore students rely on private tutors and commercial tuition centres as helping hands towards attaining academic excellence, I wonder what exactly are the roles of current school teachers?

What has gone wrong that teachers who spend at least six hours a day, five days a week with their students are not commanding sufficient respect? Do they themselves lack discipline in the first place? Are they worthy of respect in the first place?
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Gee thanks for tarring everyone with the same brush. That's really fair and well-deserved.

The role of a teacher is supposed to be simple - to teach. But the moment things start coming in that detract from it, we start running out of time. When we do that, we have to rush. When we rush, learning inadvertently drops. And that's where tutors, who earn more than us by the way, come in. MOE has to decide if they want teachers to focus on teaching, or if they want the children to turn to tutors instead. Tutors may do a better job because of one word - ratio. Let's have them teach 40 and see if they can handle it.

I laugh to myself when you ask if MOE considers character when they hire teachers. I'd like to see you get off your high horse and propose how you'd measure the character of someone you are interviewing. You don't even know the character of some of your colleagues whom you've worked with for years. How then do you expect MOE to get all the bad apples out of the basket?

Moreover, do your research before you shoot letters off to the press. Since when do teachers spend six hours (at least!) with our students. We'd be lucky to get three. Factor in school holidays, exams and other special events, and the average goes way down. And what character values can you effectively impart when your focus is on getting their attention when they are over-stimulated at home by parents who use the TV/PC as a babysitter, and then again with virtually all time-proven discipline methods banned by MOE because of aforementioned over-protective parents?

You really can't have your cake and eat it. If you don't want us to discipline, do it yourself. And if you want us to do it, stop telling us we can't do anything remotely effective.

Finally, I say the main reason children lack respect for teachers is partly because of what parents do. I witnessed a parent call a maid stupid in front of her children. Gee, that will really make the children listen to the maid when the mum's not around.

Children no longer have fear of discipline. Inconsistent discipline at home teaches them how to get away with it and they pull the same stunts at school. But our hands are tied. How long before they call our bluff? Epiphany: "Hey! You can't do anything to me! Even if you call my parents, they don't do anything either!"

Spare the rod and spoil the child. But our generation has chosen to spoil the future of our nation instead.

Traditional ways of disciplining kids are now deemed harsh and stifling (Ho Kong Loon, Today Voices, 29/10, p30)

I REFER to “Ill-behaved pupils on excursion” (Oct 29).

I share Mr Lionel de Souza’s unhappiness and concern about how the school children had misbehaved, and the apparent lack of supervision on the teachers’ part.

This phenomenon is not an isolated one. As a retired teacher, I have personally witnessed the proliferation of errant kids. The “I, me, my, mine, myself” genre has become the rule rather than the exception.

A better educated and liberal generation of parents has revolutionised the manner and approach to parenting. The traditional way we disciplined our kids is now deemed harsh, cruel, inhibitive and stifling. Kids today enjoy unbridled freedom, independence and rights.

I do not doubt the sincerity and good intentions of those who advocate a more liberal, lighter touch in raising and disciplining children.

But for many young parents, it is the inability to see the trees from the forest that trip them.

Mired in a relentless pursuit for a better life, the dues many working parents pay are usually less time with their kids, slavish dependence on domestic help, elderly parents or child-care centres, over indulgence and over compensation.

Teachers have their work well cut out for them when it involves managing kids who are restless, hyperactive, disobedient, aggressive, vocal or disruptive. In short, their hands are tightly bound, metaphorically speaking.

Educators today are well aware the parameters they operate within are distinctly marked out: No scolding, no corporal punishment, no writing of lines, no detention class, no deprivation of recess, no negative remarks, no threats ... the list is endless.

I taught the less-academically-inclined kids for 40 years. A glare from me was all it took to still a restless kid or alert an inattentive one.

Very few kids dared defy their teachers then because they knew they had no recourse to parental protection or interference. The discipline master or the school head dealt with cases of indiscipline firmly and effectively.

Can we as adults do much to remedy the present malaise and deteriorating state of discipline?

There are Singaporeans who will argue comprehensively, articulately and passionately that Mr Lionel, my peers and I are dinosaurs, time frozen by our mindset.

Are we?

All About My Mother

Synopsis by Flixster

Manuela, a nurse and single mother in her late thirties must come to terms with the tragic loss of her only son, Esteban, when he is struck by a car. She never told Esteban who he was, "your father died long before you were born" was all she ever told him. In memory of her son--who's his father's namesake--Manuela leaves Madrid and goes to Barcelona in search of Esteban's father. However, the man that she left behind, eighteen years ago when she was pregnant, is now a transvestite named Lola. The search for a man with that name cannot be simple. And indeed it isn't.

My take

What touched me most about this movie is when the mother of the nun, Rosa (Penelope Cruz), who got pregnant and subsequently HIV-infected, asked herself what she'd done wrong with her daughter. She said that Rosa had been like an alien to her since her teenage years. That really struck a chord with me. Parenthood is all about learning as we go along. No one really created a fail-safe guide to parenthood.

A parent may do everything right but still have a failure of a child, or vice versa. Look at Manuela (Cecilia Roth). She raised her son as a single mother, juggling that with her job as a nurse (just like my mum), and yet she lost a aspiring writer son to a freak motor accident.

Parents have to do the best they can for their children, and the rest are in God's hands.

I loved this movie because it spoke of a mother's love and the disappointments she faces. This was true for both Manuela and Rosa's mum. They rose above their circumstances: Manuela's husband became a transvestite and left her and her son died. Rosa's mum saw her daughter get pregnant and HIV-positive, and had to bury her.

Yet, a mother's love carries on. It truly is the greatest love in the world.